[excerpt:]
The Department of Agriculture declared safe for human consumption yesterday an experimental variety of genetically engineered rice found to have contaminated the U.S. rice supply this summer...

The experimental rice, designed to resist Bayer's Liberty weedkiller, escaped from Bayer's test plots after the company dropped the project in 2001. The resulting contamination, once it became public, prompted countries around the world to block rice imports from the United States, sending rice futures plummeting and farmers into fits.

In approving the rice, the USDA allowed Bayer to take a regulatory shortcut and skip many of the usual safety tests by declaring that the new variety is similar to ones already approved, in this case two varieties of biotech rice that Bayer never commercialized because farmers did not want them in their fields...

The full article is available on the Washington Post website.

See also:

• Unapproved, Genetically Engineered Rice Found in Food Supply
• Genetic Pollution Threatens Trade, Health and the Environment